And I won’t be blogging much from this site till I return to New York. However I am keeping everyone updated on the progress of GOLIAD UPRISING (premieres June 21st in Austin) and the daily adventures on the farm through Facebook.

Please check out our page for Cascades Lookout Farm and give it a ‘like.’

Thanks!

What we started with in July 2011.

We finally got the acreage mowed in April.

And started putting up a large deer fence to protect the future garden.

We were also gathering all the garbage strewn around the place for burning.

Planted three apple trees, and extended the deer fence in May.

And are finishing the deer fence and garden gate today.

Made some great friends at Outlantacon this weekend.

Tomorrow will be a quick day of meetings, then flying to Oregon Wednesday morning.

Anyone else traveling this week?

I will gladly admit that this hour in first class would appear to be lavish, but the upgrade was a free fluke, the plane is smaller than the matchbox apartment in New York, and peanuts taste the same whether I’m  sitting in row 2 or row 12.

What IS totally coooool is the cause for the journey: A weekend meeting new sci fi loving friends and the exciting opportunity to see GOLIAD UPRISING screen for the first time.

Maybe I shouldn’t say ‘exciting’ since the real feeling is absolute terror the audience will hate the movie  or even worse, feel indifferent about it. Since the screening is Sunday, I have two days of morbid anticipation.

Another airport. This one is Washington International.

No matter what the reaction, it’s been a good ride  and I’m grateful for the journey. Today Atlanta. Tuesday New York. Wednesday Sweet Home and back to digging post holes for the garden.

I’ll let you know if they throw chairs during the screening or snub me as I slip out of the hotel.

If anyone needs a bar of soap let me know and I’ll snag you some.  Stealing souvenir soap; I am a jetsetter.

Crossing the Willamette River

And now I’m settling into the lounge for the 90 minutes to Albany.

We’re heading south, following the river, slowly gaining elevation.

In Salem.

Arrived safely in Sweet Home.

Cowboy stretching his legs in Pasco.

Cowboy

It's been more than 145 miles...

The next three hours will be along the Columbia River.

Columbia River

This is my new buddy, Jennifer, who boarded in Richmond, VA on Sunday and we’ve been riding in the same car the past four  days.

Trucker is still here in the lounge and he’s been holding court with a young hipster couple, talking ignorant politics.

Americans are so easily manipulated. Hmmmmm, I made a movie about that. And we must sell ten more tickets to the premiere today to hold the theater. Google Goliad Uprising Brown Paper Tickets and take this worry off my plate. Please.

Heading into the rain.

We’re about forty minutes from Portland. I missed my Amtrak bus connection. They are supposed to be holding the Coast Starlight for us and transferring our bags. I’ve got four boxes of hard drives in checked luggage. I’m trusting everything will arrive in Albany with me.

I’m awake. We’re sitting in a siding waiting to meet a freight train coming toward us.

We’ve been here awhile.

It’s just one sleeper car, two coaches and the lounge car behind an engine. A dinky little train in the huge Washington savannah. If I could see us, we’d look lost.

Best sleep yet last night. I had several vivid dreams, and feel more rested. None of us have seat mates (unless you brought one with you).

I’m sitting in the empty lounge car, staring into the dark, my dimly illuminated ghost stares back. I see a few trucks zipping along the distant horizon, and at the top of my picture window half a gauzy moon breaks cloud cover.

A couple hours later, we’ve gone a few miles and are in another siding. The clouds are glowing in the east and my ghost left with the morning light. 

A trucker talked my ear off for an hour before sunrise. When he came ’round to devine destiny and spreading the gospel I realized the only way out of the conversation was to simply leave.

Cowboy is awake, acting perky. Got himself some coffee, navigating the stairs to the lounge car by himself. I gave him a fruit bar and will leave him alone since he seems able to do for himself.

Beginning to make the transition to Oregon living. A lot of bearded country boys, doing country jobs.

8am. Moved to the next siding, and sitting again. Freight train in front of us has a mechanical. 

Four strangers gathered in the lounge, all men, start gossiping about the cause of the delay. Maybe our train is broken and they’re lying to us. Yeah, cause something went wrong yesterday, so that must be what’s happening now. And we stayed in Spokane so long…

I couldn’t take it. I interrupted. Yesterdays problem was minor and we don’t have that problem. The signals are red. We’re waiting for clear track. We left Spokane on schedule.

Bored men stir up shit. The human condition.

I went back to my seat, and am listening to music on the laptop. “One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble…” 

Three nights on a train makes a hard man edgy.

Started to roll at 9am.

Pasco, WA in about thirty miles.

Which is not to say we’re in the mountains, cause we ain’t.

You know  I could have taken one prairie picture and it would have referenced the whole day. I should make a movie for these people: the Prairie People. I don’t know what it would be about, but there would be a lot of grass.

Zonked out in the seat across the aisle is a rodeo cowboy older than I am who boarded this morning. Come to find out he was just released from the hospital with broken ribs, bruises everywhere and no pain meds. I’ve been getting food for him and offering him some relief from my dop kit. He’ll be asleep a couple hours. He missed the steer and lost the job. He’s going to Portland to look for work because “it sounds nice.”

Glacier National Park ahead. It’s 6:30. We might get there before sundown.

This android camera isn’t getting a good shot. The mountains are completely covered in snow. Quite spectacular.

It’s clouded over, and we’re going into dark.  We were able to see all the park from the train. Gorgeous. Hadn’t been here since my family hiked Grennel glacier when I was a kid.

Tonight will be a sliver of Idaho, a long stop in Spokane to break the train into two sections, and then eastern Washington state as we roll to the Columbia River Gorge.

Goodnight.from Whitefish, MT. 9:10pm.

I understand why building a transcontinental railroad up here in the 1880′s was feasible. This land is nearly flat for hundreds of miles.

Sunrise was just before seven, west of Devil’s Lake, N.D.

The ground is frozen. Ice crystals sparkle on the clumps of prairie grass.

I had two different seat mates in the night, but got better sleep than the previous night. The passenger load is thinning out the further we go from Minneapolis and most of us have a seat to ourselves.

A lot of college kids on board, heading back to their colleges after Easter break.

Rugby, ND. The geographic center of North America. If that’s not reason enough to live here, than by God, there can be no better.

I’m sure Netflix does good business.

A little side note, I’m on the second to last car of the train. Tomorrow morning in Spokane the rear five cars will be cut off and hauled to Portland. The front five or six cars will go to Seattle. Everyone is seated according to our destinations.

We’re coming into Minot (rhymes with why not?). Cloudless, clear pale blue sky. A few patches of green grass in town. The prairie and wheat fields are still sitting farrow. Sharp, dry cold weather. I can’t feel my ears after ten minutes outside.

Thirty minute layover here. No data connection.

The train station is under construction.

Not much to report on Minot. West of town the train climbs into the high plains, which are a bit more scenic. Austere. Dramatically stark. Homesteading this was not for the timid.

The oil boom in North Dakota is the reason for pockets of mobile home and RV housing communities. A new refinery or storage facility is being built in Tiago.

The oil rigs and mobile home shanty towns pop up across the plains till west of Williston, ND.

In the seat in front of me was a guy, probably just out of high school, coming to Williston to start the harvest season. He drives a combine. With no visible crop growing, he wondered why his boss is starting him out here.  Through the season that runs into November he’ll combine crops across the country- the Canadian border to the valley in Texas. This barely educated kid will feed millions of people this year.

And look, we’re in Montana now.

Time for a nap.

Wolf Point, Glasgow, Malta, Havre are quick stops with fewer than a dozen passengers each.  The prairie stretches into the evening.

1) Crossing this in a wagon would have required absolute determination and desperation to leave home with blind faith it will be better if you survive to reach the coast.

2) Amtrak, for all it’s incompetence, still manages to run daily trains on this route in spite of the vast distances between stations and the low passenger demand out here.

3) I’m the only passenger who started from New York, but I’m hanging out with a Norwegian fisherman who got on my train in D. C.

I’ll post again when we enter the Rockies this evening.

Mountains in the far distance at 4:30pm.

We crossed the La Crosse River in La Crosse, WI and entered Minnesota.

I have a delightful seat mate til Minneapolis, and then might be alone for the night. We’ll see.  Anyway, she’s doing graduate work in anesthesiology and has lived all over the country.

Winona Station and sun down.

In Wisconsin Dells,.and nearing sunset.